So How Did LED Christmas Lights Come About?
Well LEDs which make Solar Christmas Lights even practical had a modest beginning. The first Light Emitting Diode was invented in about 1907 by a guy named H.J. Round, a British Chap who noted the properties but didn’t think they warrented further research.
It wasn’t until the 1960′s that they became popular for digital indicators such as clocks,etc and they only emitted red since that was as far as the technology had gotten. It wasn’t long after, in 1971 that blue joined the repertoir and we had a choice. I actually remember that Blue LEDs made much “cooler’ watches.
The technology developed over the next 20 years and by the 1990s we had greatly improved our color range and the brightness so that they began being used for billboard displays. By the late 1990′s they were being used as Holiday decorations such as Christmas tree lights and outdoor lights. They were a quite a bit more expensive but they used less power.
By 2006 the Capitol Christmas tree was completely decorated with LEDs and the next year the big tree at Rockafeller Center followed suit. The fact that they use abut one tenth of the power required by incandescant bulbs made them very popular for large lighting projects. There was a popular restaurant in Los Angeles that had a massive number of lights decorating their building and by switching to LEDs they saved more on their electric bill in one month than most private homes spend in a year.
Today they allow us to go one step further and power our holiday lighting by using the Sun. Solar Christmas lights would not be possible if it were not for LEDs because of their low power consumption. The fact that they have been known to last up to 200,000 hours is another plus.(this is only for the Christmas tree size- the home lighting size is more like 30,000 hrs.) They make displays like this Posible:
Solar Christmas Lights could save you allot of cash on your utility bill during a time of year when cash can be tight.
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